Leopard Hills Wildlife Report April 2006 (Part 1)
Posted by Duncan and Louise Rodgers on May 12, 2006 at 06:35:21:
M a n a g e r s R e p o r t The Sand River Lion Saga Community Development The Lodge We are already starting to see the fist Elephant visitors to the plunge pools at the Rooms as we head into winter. It is not uncommon to have to fill up the pools after their departure. We hope you have a great month and enjoy the Rangers Report to follow. Looking forward to seeing you all in the bush with us soon. Thanks to Mark Bondy, Jeff Nowakowski, Marius and Ken Verdon for supplying the pictures for this months Reports. Kind Regard on behalf of the Leopard Hills Team. Duncan and Louise Rodgers R a n g e r s R e p o r t Something that certainly is changing at the moment is the climate. As we start moving towards the winter we are experiencing the gradual shifting of temperatures. Mornings and Evenings are getting much cooler now. Jackets and Fleeces are a must as we leave in the mornings for our early game drives. We are expecting a rather chilly winter this year considering the amount of water still just lying on the surface of the ground in the seep lines. The moist soil will serve to cool things down a lot more than usual. It is really beautiful though, cool, crisp mornings watching the sun rise behind a curtain of mist and slowly burn through; to kiss our skins with its warm rays needed to ease us out of our protective layers. Hyaena Cheetah Rhino Oh, and Marius didn’t see any mating rhinos this month. He was making this a bit of a habit! Buffalo Elephants Some very large Elephant bulls have also been encountered on drives this month. This too can be attributed to the presence of the many different breeding herds in the reserve. The large breeding stock bulls have been shadowing the herds in the hope of finding cows that may be ready to mate with. Some mating behaviour was witnessed by a lucky few guests during the month. It certainly isn’t something seen to regularly. All in all it has been a magical month to observe behaviour displayed by our large amount of elephants.
Dear Friends and Colleagues
Another month and another Report, so here we go. I can communicate the presence of two of the Sand River Females back in the Reserve, and they have been seen mating with the coalition of 6 new male Lions who have moved in from the East. While we are still extremely upset by the circumstances surrounding the demise of so many Pride members, it has become apparent that the arrival of these 6 new males would have seen the demise of all the youngsters anyway, we are just grateful that 2 of the adult Sand River females are still alive to start a new era of the Pride we have know for so long.
The community projects are going from strength to strength, and thank you to all of our Guests who have taken the time to partake in the “Village Tours”, especially those who have shown interest in the Dumfries Orphanage. I must again here make special mention of the Bondy Family, thank you for the photos and the positive feedback.
This is a busy time of the year with the run up to the Indaba Travel Show in Durban. It is really great to meet so many of Travel Agents and Tour Operators who have supported us so much over the year. Thank you as always for your support, we really appreciated it and we look forward to another great year head.
April has come and gone and has certainly brought relief to the bush with a lot less rain recorded. At last the veld has an opportunity to dry out a little after 3 months of almost constant rain. At this time of the year the grass has usually lost its green colour and the fields of drying brown grass are seen dotted around the reserve. Our environment is at this point still very colourful, green grass; pink, purple, white, yellow and red flowers still dominate the landscape.
Right next to our airstrip, where so many of you have landed and hopefully will be landing in the future, we have found a very active den site. The cooler temperatures are adding to the value of our sightings here as the three youngsters come out to play in the sun to try warm themselves up a little. Magnificent photographic opportunities are available here at the den site where we have recorded up to five adults with the three cubs. We have made an estimate of their ages, and come to the conclusion that the little hyaenas can’t be much older than eight months. They have started eating meat which is brought back to the den site by the adults. This usually does not happen before cubs reach the age of seven months .We hope that this group stays here and more females decide to have their cubs at this same site.
We had only one sighting of Cheetah this month. They continue to be rather scarce. The lack of sightings can also be attributed to the thickness of the grass and vegetation and it would appear that the cheetahs are preferring areas with less dense bush and shrubbery. With the drying and thinning vegetation, we can only hope that the cheetahs will also make their return to our reserve.
I am truly lost for words when it comes to reporting about the Rhino sightings every month. How many times can I write, “We have had wonderful Rhino Sightings?’. Well here goes again : Rhino sightings have remained great throughout the month of April. A fair mixture of sexes and ages were encountered evenly spread over the extent of the reserve.
The breeding herd have made a welcome return this month to the reserve. What was the most pleasant about watching the big herds were the views we got of multitudes of small calves bouncing around playing with each other. Birthing season peaks are reached in February and March and are now starting to taper off a little. The calves are healthy and growing fast thanks to the amount of food available to them after the fantastic rains we had this year. Other than these sightings we have also encountered groups of bulls along the water courses more regularly this month than last month. This due to the fact that the drying roads are giving us access to areas from which we were cut off for a couple of months.
We have had one of the best months of elephant viewing this month. It has been a treat to be able to view up to five different breeding herds in a drive on a regular basis. With so many breeding herds in our reserve at the moment ,it goes without saying that we are also getting a lot of sightings of very small new born calves. The cuteness factor is most certainly prevalent when we park near a breeding herd of these mammoth mammals. Watching the youngsters playing with each other certainly help alleviate the apprehension many feel being in such close proximity to such large animals.
PART 2 TO FOLLOW...